The Book of Examples: the History of the Berbers and of the Muslim Dynasties of North Africa

Ibn Khaldun's tribal histories are the standard account of the powers that Almohad chronicles treat as background: the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym in Ifriqiya and Tripolitania and their alliances with the Banu Ghaniya and Qaraqush; the Zenata of the central Maghreb (Banu Marin, Banu Abd al-Wad, Tujin, Maghrawa) before their rise; the Sanhaja and the veiled peoples of the Sahara; the Masmuda and the Almohad tribes. His Almohad chapters give the reign of al-Nasir with the Banu Ghaniya war, the loss and recovery of Ifriqiya and the appointment of the Hafsid founder in 1207; his Sudan chapters record the tradition that Ghana was broken by the Sosso and then absorbed by Mali, with the Mali king list. He wrote 175 years later from earlier books and from oral tradition collected in the Maghreb, so for 1200 he is a synthesis, but often the only one. His judgements on nomads and dynasties are his own theory of history, not reportage.